


no need to guess

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 02:29:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15547599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Soulmarks are one of the few reliable forms of prognostication.  Gil wonders if he should yield to scientific instinct, or if some things it's really better not to know.





	no need to guess

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [J'ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m'en reste](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3394883) by [melannen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/melannen). 



> The ideas both of soulmarks being the first words someone says to you once they really love you, not when they meet you, and of soulmarks being brought out deliberately instead of just showing up, were fascinating - and interestingly adaptable to GG.

\---

Gil, by virtue of being one of Theo's closest friends - most of the students were some kind of friend to him - saw the soulmark the morning after Theo had worked out how to bring it out. "It's not that hard," he told them. "I can do it for you. If any of you want."

Sleipnir looked sheepish. Sleipnir had her mark already - she'd done the ceremony last time she visited home - and didn't bother hiding it. Z and Daiyu, who could expect the same soon enough, murmured polite demurrals. That left Gil, the orphan as far as the rest of them knew, on the spot. "I think," he started, and then had to stop as he choked on his own thoughts. "I think I'd rather not know."

"As you will," Theo declared, and swept out his arms like an actor about to take a bow. And because he'd made a joke of it, nobody else said a thing.

Nor did they mention how well his words matched Sleipnir's, like two lines in a conversation. _Will you come with me? Like I'd let you leave me behind._ Sleipnir had an arranged marriage waiting at home, and with that sort of arrangement, you were just expected to hope your soulmark meant someone would love you like a brother.

Sometimes it did work like that. There were enough romantic love-at-first sight stories where two people's first words to each other were the ones that proved they would love each other for the rest of their lives; the reality was messier. It could be that you only knew someone well enough to love them, truly and for the rest of their life, when you'd known them for years. Or decades. It could be they would return it and speak the words on your wrist years later, or decades, or never. And, of course, there were soulmates who were comrades-in-arms, or creative collaborators, instead of lovers. There were even sibling soulmates, for people lucky enough to have siblings. Gil would have been happy with any of those. 

"Are you going to try to hide it?" he asked Theo. The secret would get out, he expected, but Gil wouldn't be the one to betray his friend's confidences. 

Theo shrugged. "No reason to. But I don't want to be in the room when Von Pinn finds out. Could somebody bring it up in class, maybe? One I'm not taking?"

\--

There were towns in the Wastelands where no one had soulmarks, where travellers with soulmarks hid their arms as carefully as a construct might hide their stitches. Soulmarks weren't _sparkwork_ , but some towns were - you couldn't even call them paranoid, considering why they were so wary of Sparks, enough to reject any technology more sophisticated than the leaf-spring. 

It wasn't difficult to bring out your own, if for whatever reason the official ceremony wasn't available. The one patchy study on the subject (Prof. Marius Lazarin, University of Pisa, 1866) suggested forty-three percent of Sparks had soulmarks, one way or another. 

Not a majority. It wasn't even strange for a Spark to be missing one. Gil reminded himself of that. Even if the rate for the students on Castle Wulfenbach, over the age of twelve, was ninety-three percent. 

He raised the idea to his father once, when he was just shy of fourteen. Klaus went quiet for a long time. What he finally said was, "Some things it's better not to know."

He wasn't being hypocritical. Gil had seen his bare forearms. He nodded, already feeling guilty for bringing up what was obviously a painful memory, because the pinched expression on Klaus’s face was the same one he used to get before Gilgamesh gave up asking about his mother. Probably for the same reasons.

\--

"Oh, we've known for a year now," Ludmilla told them, blushing. "I guess some people just get lucky."

Zola was doing the same charming smile she did on customers, except there was, maybe, a little more wist in it than usual. Maybe not. Gil couldn't be sure; he was no good at reading moods. "It must be nice," Zola sighed, " _knowing_ somebody loves you."

On the bench beside her Thegon was staring firmly at the wall and rubbing his neck as if having found his soulmate young was something to be ashamed of. Gil resisted the urge to stomp on his foot. Some people didn't know how lucky they were. Ludmilla was saying, "Oh, I know," with the guileless smile that had half the class convinced she was a spy, although the betting pool hadn't settled on whose. "Have you ever thought about getting it done?"

"Not really." Zola frowned. "I'd rather just know when I look into his eyes, you know? Besides, it's so expensive."

"Oh, if you find a Spark who'll do you a favor you can get it for free," someone said, and Gil was horrified to realize it had been him. It was true, to be sure, but it would be so awkward if she'd meant it about knowing by instinct.

Zola wrinkled her nose. "I don't think so. I wouldn't want people to think I was putting on airs."

Oh. There was that, too. 

\--

There was only one dancer of Gil's acquaintance with a soulmark, in fact, and as she had bitterly explained to him over gin-and-tonics one night, so many men had tried to use it as a pickup line she was about to add long gloves to her costume. Gil nodded in sympathy and swore never to speak the words 'You have beautiful eyes' in her presence. It was easy to promise. If he had a soulmate, she wouldn't be a club dancer.

Wooster had the mark. Gil caught a glimpse of it, once, vanishing as he buttoned up his shirtcuffs. He made sure to wait for several days before he asked, "Is it true every British citizen has a soulmark?"

"Certainly not," Wooster answered, blinking over his Metahistory text in a convincing simulacrum of confusion. "Why would anyone think that?"

"Just a rumour I heard." A persistent folk belief across most of Europa, really.

"There are religious objectors. Most Jews, and the Avignon Catholics. And of course some people aren't fated to it, and some people simply don't want to know." Wooster shrugged. "It's not _obligatory._ "

"Oh."

"But anyone who wants to know can apply to the Vital Statistics Bureau. We don't leave these things up to _churches_. Her Majesty wouldn't stand for it." Wooster shook his head, in despair at the disorganization of everywhere but Britain, or possibly at the general ignorance of the world. 

Theirry Dupont, head of one of the less successful Paris-investigation societies, had a mark, and rolled his sleeves up to show it off, for all he came from (in his own words) a mud puddle in the middle of nowhere. "If I ever went back there my parents would try to scrub it off with carbolic soap," he admitted, while they gossiped after a meeting. He was rubbing the words with his thumb, a promising scrawl of _I don't see why not_. 

"So why did you get it done?" Dupont wore threadbare coats and the same boots all year; he must have asked a Sparky friend for help. 

"Because I'm never going back there."

Tarvek didn't have a mark. _Hadn't,_ Dupree gleefully reported in the past tense, and Gil decided not to mention that Tarvek had survived jumping off her coracle with the inevitability of a cat. He was Fifty Families; he must have had the ceremony. Gil took a little vicious pleasure in the thought that the weasel would die alone. 

\--

Paris rate: approximately twelve percent, but better than half for students at the Academie de la Extraordinaire. The usual sprinkling of rumours. But in a city where Sparks lived openly, the prevailing theory at the city-wide Academie de Gossip was that some Spark, back in prehistory, had wanted to find love so badly they resorted to precognition, and then tried it on everyone they knew for the sake of a control group.

Gil could sympathize. He had friends, he had all the friends he could want, but sometimes when they went out drinking and he had to listen to Thierry proudly explain some control code theory that didn't even match the data they already had, or Zola ask wide-eyed why the Baron didn't invest more in restoring the Roman roads, or Wooster confidently assert that the Pythian Graph Problem would _never_ be solved - sometimes Gil thought that there was no one who would ever understand him.

Or the only person on his level was his father, and Gil wasn't sure which would be worse.

He knew collecting statistics was a delaying tactic, and he admitted as much when he finally handed over his notebook to Colette and asked for her advice. Some problems were only solvable with fresh eyes.

Colette leafed through it, frowning. There was enough noise in the _Cafe du Chat Bleu_ in the evenings, it was its own sort of privacy, and they had gotten the booth in the back by virtue of Colette's eerily good timing. Gil sipped his tea, and waited, and tried not to actually tap his feet with impatience. It felt like an hour later but was actually four minutes when she said, "How long have you been thinking about this?"

"Since I was thirteen." He'd finished the tea; he realized he was twirling the empty cup on his fingers, and set it back down. "I know this is a very personal question, but - why didn't you?"

"What makes you think I didn't?"

"Uh. Well." He waved helplessly at her arms. 

Colette, who wore her bare forearms as casually as her face, smirked at him. "It doesn't show on my skin." 

Which was patent nonsense. Soulmarks had a way of coming through; there were enough Parisians with pale tan words on their dark skin to demonstrate that. Gil had even met a Jäger whose dark green hide was inscribed VE HUNT! in shaky red block letters - _it vas brown ven Hy got it,_ he'd admitted, _but it changed._ Gil looked aside. "If you don't have a soulmate that's awful, you deserve one, and I'm sorry I pried and I should just stop talking now, shouldn't I?"

"Shh." Colette beckoned him closer with one finger, and Gil leaned over the table, hoping his blush wasn't warm enough to feel. Her next words were softer, barely audible over the roar of conversation. "I'm going to tell you a secret. I tattooed over them. So now they match my skin."

"Oh."

"Safer than wearing long sleeves all the time." Her nose wrinkled. "Or those fashionable cuffs. But -" she tapped his hand, and Gil wasn't exactly pasty but he was nowhere near dark enough the words would show up negative - "you don't have that option, unless you want to get very creative with the coverup."

Gil tried to imagine himself with tattoos all over his arms. Somehow the only image that came to mind was Castle Wulfenbach, and he didn't want to imagine what his father would say when he saw that. Besides, a forearm tattoo seemed like an advertisement for 'will die alone'. Better than a bare wrist. Maybe it would be worth it for the misdirection. For now, he offered, "I can try to wear long sleeves."

"Gil, I've _seen_ how many shirts you lose."

"I know, and yet you're immune to my charm." He grinned. This was familiar territory for jokes; Colette's friends all knew how she listed, even if High Society seemed convinced she was port-or-starboard. 

She chuckled, at least. "Well - the other option is not to care who knows. Trust that you'll know real love when you see it."

Gil stared down at the empty bottom of his teacup. Wasn't there a superstition about reading the future in tea leaves? There were so many prognostication methods, and so few that worked reliably. 

"I just want to know whether I should give up hope," he said to the teacup. "I'll deal with the rest. Somehow."

Colette nodded. "I'll help you, then," she said, as if it were obvious.

\--

What if it were Colette? The idea occurred to Gil late that night, as he sat staring at the unmarked skin of his wrist and trying to think of explanations for the sudden penchant for bracers he was about to develop. Someone would ask something, because his life would never be easy. He was sure they weren't soulmates _yet_ , but give it five years. She was the closest he'd found to a woman he could really talk to. Gil could imagine coming to love her like a sister, one of those quiet, contentedly platonic partnerships. Conducted mostly by radio, because he couldn't imagine Colette leaving Paris. And he'd marry whoever his father needed him to and hope his wife wasn't jealous.

Looked at like that the idea of Colette as Gil's soulmate was absolutely miserable.

Or maybe it would be worse; maybe whoever loved him would be someone incapable of understanding. Nothing said marks couldn't be one-way. For all he knew it might say _Zoing?_ in the shaky scrawl of someone who could only write with an alphabet board in front of him to copy from, pen held awkwardly in an oversized claw. Zoing loved Gil. There had never been any doubt about that. He just wasn't someone Gil could really talk to.

For that matter, what if his arm stayed blank? Gil would have to give up hope then. He would know, as certainly as it was possible to know, that no one would ever really understand him.

But -

What kind of scientist was he if he ran away from the experiment?

\--

Colette ran her finger down the line of the mark. His skin felt tender, but maybe that was his imagination. "Interesting," she offered. "It sounds like something a Spark would say."

The words were traced in a neat secretarial hand. It was only that three of them blurred on the edges, like someone pressing down too hard on an old pen nib, trying to convey the force of a scream in script, scoring their passion into the paper. Or his arm, in this case. 

_So that **will not happen!**_

It did sound Sparky, now that Gil thought about it.

"It's something _someone_ will say," he told her. "That's all I needed to know."

\--


End file.
